The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1887-01-14
TOO MANY MEALS.

Examples of Wasteful Feeding Which
Convey Most Important Lesson.
The bills for feed worried me. They
were large, and ] wondered if there was
corresponding gain in the animals
fed. 1t was all right with the COWS, for
there was the butter to offset the extra
food. The calves and young cattle
were growing and looked as well as
they did in summer. The oxen were
gaining and every day adding to their
weight, but the hogs were the sticker.
watched the meal go into the bins
and into the troughs and the manure
go out of the door of each pen and at
last made up my mind something was
wrong. There was too much food used
for the apparent gain. 1t has been a
hobby of mine, and is yet, that the
manure made by the hogs is worth
about as much for the farm in;
the long run as the bran and other feed
costs; still, l wanted to get my pay for
the feed out of the gain in the hogs.
This I feared I was not doing, there
was so much meal used. There was
one pen of pigs to be killed, and the
man was directed to give them
a full supper but no breakfast and this
was done.
They were slaughtered about noon
of the day after the last meal had been
given to them. This consisted of three
parts wheat bran and one in bulk of
wheat canaille. When killed their
stomachs were full. They might have
held more, but they were really full of
The bran and canaille. 1t looked nat.
ural but had an acid smell. This food
was in the process of digestion. Be-
yond the stomach the large intestines
were also filled. l was satisfied that
my hogs had been overfed-not given
too much at meal, but they had been
given too many meals. They had been
fed three times a day, and the excess of
food had crowded the contents Of the
stomach and bowels along in its pas
sage before it had been well digested
and assimilated, and so the heap of
manure had been excessively large
without a proportionate gain in the
hogs. Let us see. Their breakfast
was between seven and eight o'clock,
dinner at noon and supper at five to six
o'clock. Within these hours it was i'm
possible for this mass of food to have
been changed to chyle, the incipient
blood. I am now astonished at my
own stupidity in not thinking of this
before.
/ found out several years ago that
there is limit to the quantity of grain
a horse can digest and to give it any
more is a great injury, and that the
amount horse should have is less than
many suppose. have also found out
and demonstrated that fattening cattle
are usually. fed more meal than they
can digest, and that there is great
waste generally in their feeding. 1
only feed the beef cattle morning and
night, and not more than four quarts
of meal at mess, with roots and hay.
Why my hogs, hundreds of them,
should have had three full meals a day
seems now to be queer, for ana sure
they never needed it, and one meal
was thrown away so far as any gain in
the growth of the hogs was concerned.
I have changed my system of feeding
and now the store hogs and all of those
fattening get but two meals in twenty
four hours. / feel confident that three
meals will be a saving of one-third Of
the amount of food ana an equal
gain. F. D. Curtis, in N. ]. Tribune.